Are Republicans boycotting MSNBC?

October 1, 2007

Last week, we saw one of the more effective media “gotcha” moments in recent memory. David Shuster, filling in for Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, interviewed Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, primarily on the congresswoman’s outrage over MoveOn.org’s “Betray Us” ad and the New York Times’ mistaken ad rate. Shuster made Blackburn look pretty foolish when, after detailing her concerns about a newspaper ad, she had no idea who was the most recent American from her district killed in Iraq.

One can argue about the question’s propriety — I thought it made for some unusually compelling television — but Shuster certainly made his point. Blackburn, like too many Republicans right now, are demonstrating misplaced priorities. As Shuster told Blackburn on the air, “[Y]ou were not appreciative enough to know the name of this young man. He was 18 years old and killed. Yet you can say chapter and verse about what’s going on with the New York Times and MoveOn.org.”

Almost immediately, the right responded by insisting that Shuster got his facts wrong — the soldier he cited wasn’t from Blackburn’s district. It turns out Shuster was right and his critics were wrong, but the network aired a correction anyway.

Not satisfied, the GOP establishment has decided to take things up a notch, punishing MSNBC for putting Shuster on the air.

[I]rked Republican Hillers are now planning a boycott of Shuster’s employer.

“We don’t mind skipping MSNBC. No one watches that channel anyway,” says a high-placed Republican consultant.

Word is, a growing number of GOP lawmakers have become mysteriously “unavailable” when asked to appear on MSNBC. Numerous meetings have taken place in both the House and the Senate side regarding the interview and “what to do about it,” Hill sources report.

What to do about it? Shuster made Blackburn look foolish on the air. It was amusing, but hardly groundbreaking. If congressional Republicans are seriously that worried about public embarrassment, they might as well remove the C-SPAN cameras from the House and Senate, and stop leaving their homes.

Anonymous Liberal explained how absurd the GOP’s overreaction is.

First of all, Republicans are boycotting an entire network because of the behavior of one guy on one day. Literally every news channel has some right-wing gasbag on it who routinely says incredibly obnoxious and unfair things about Democratic politicians. CNN has, among others, Glenn Beck. MSNBC has Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Pat Buchanan, among others. And Fox News is a full-fledged GOP propaganda outlet. Yet Democrats continue to appear on these networks every day.

Moreover, Shuster was immediately forced to apologize by his bosses at MSNBC, even before the facts were in and it was shown that he was right. Yet this is somehow worthy of a network wide boycott? What a bunch of thin-skinned ninnies.

Agreed. I’d only add that it’s somewhat ironic that, despite protests from the netroots, congressional Democrats refuse to boycott Fox News for its systemic and unadulterated partisanship, but one uncomfortable, six-minute appearance with a fill-in host sparked “numerous meetings” and an apparent boycott.

The Party of Grown-Ups they’re not.

If congressional Republicans are seriously that worried about public embarrassment, they might as well remove the C-SPAN cameras from the House and Senate, and stop leaving their homes.

Reality has a well known liberal bias.

  • Let the Republicans boycott all the networks. Then maybe the percentage of liberal and moderates being interviewed will go up and the bile the Repubs spew will be reduced to the audience of Fox News.

  • If Republicans can’t stand up to David Shuster, how can they stand up to Al Qaeda? /snark

  • the sad note is: the boycott will work. msnbc will be sure that no republican is asked a tough question again.

  • Sounds like a cool interview- nevertheless, too bad it wasn’t on a higher-rated show. I can’t say Tucker’s show is that interesting.

  • Here is the point that always seems to be missed. When the media cross the Rethugs (however rare) they can expect an immediate slap down where it hurts–no more “product”, no more Rethug guests. When the media cross the Dems, they know nothing of consequence will happen but pointy-headed, mealy-mouthed statements that no one will hear anyway. So, do the math. Dems will continue to be persecuted with impunity by the SCLM while the Rethugs get public apologies and retractions if, by some unlikely gaffe, they cross a Rethug. If Dems would take the lead from the Rethugs on this, we’d have media that would be forced to treat them fairly or risk losing the lifeblood of their shows and papers–sources and guests.

  • There we go, Dems boycott FOX, GOP boycotts MSNBC… the slippery slope of boycotting due to political leanings has just gotten worse. My guess, PBS is next!

  • This is probably more about Olberman than Shuster – Abrams premature apology just gave them an excuse to start their hissy fit. They’ve been mad about Olberman for sometime and haven’t been able to put pressure on MSNBC to get him bumped.

    If Abrams had been less of a coward and had done a thorough fact check before issuing his apology – and had noted that the Congresswoman hadn’t even supplied a single name, which was the damn point of the whole thing (she didn’t give the wrong name, she couldn’t even give A name) – he’d be on firmer ground. He made the network look like they did something wrong and now he’s got a boycott on his hands.

    Nice work Dan! Perhaps this’ll teach you that newmen need to be ballbusters and not asskissers if they want to survive in this field.

  • This goes beyond being merely thin-skinned. The GOP is no longer even trying to maintain the illusion of propriety. Dem presidential candidates refused to participate in a Fox News co-cponsored debate because Fox has a long, infamous history of “Swift Boat”-ing Democrats, using innuendo and rumor and flat-out lies to advance a Republican agenda. The philosophy was, they can’t stop Fox from using their quotes, mashing them up and distorting them to make the candidates look foolish, but they also certainly do’nt have to legitimize them by letting them co-sponsor the venue. But now people in the GOP are now trying to get their entire party to boycott MSNBC becuase one host made one politician look foolish. And really, she made herself look foolish, truth be told.

    it’s an attempt not only to control the message, but to clamp down on it, feed it the fertilizer of their lies and the artificial light that reflects of their whity white white skin as its only souce of nourishment. It further wedges the divide between the us and the them. And it’s a line in the sand to those who are in the mushy middle, not sure who to believe. The right is where most of the wealth is, Oprah notwithstanding. It’s where most of the power is, especially since our Demo majorities in both houses of Congress are filled with such cowards. It’s saying, if a cultural war erupts, what side do you want to be on? The side that controls everything? Or the ineffectual left?

  • This is not new. Repulicans threatened to boycott Crossfire when they replaced that weanie Kingsley with Begala and Carville. Outrageous! The Republican Party threatened to stop appearing on Hardball after Matthews took Michele Malkin to task for insinuating Kerry shot himself and executed a 13 year-old (charges made by an unafiliated group, the MSM told us, the SBV, whom we should not in any way mistake for having any coordination with the GOP). As pennance, the SBV’s lawyer (who also worked for Bush 2004) became a regular guest on his roundtable for the rest of the campaign.

    What’s bringing all this out in the open is that with FOX, we finally have a Democratic example that the media can highlight to bring this out in the open. Again, we’re threatening to join their country club, and they don’t want our kind thinning out all that blue blood.

  • I doubt the MSNBC boycott will last longer than a few weeks. The Republicans can’t help themselves when a microphone is dangled in front of them. They might have some conditions regarding the kind of questions allowed to be asked, but expect them to be back soon.

  • Yes, but they lie to each other and believe each other rather than just say to one of their comrades, “You’re lying”. And so they lock together in outrage all believing the same lie. It ‘s getting to the point that nothing can be said because they just stubbornly put their fingers in their ears and talk loudly to keep from hearing the truth and then try to convince those who haven’t heard that their version is the truth. Calling them “ninnies” doesn’t quite get it. They are liars who will even change and edit out parts of the transcript to cover up the lie. These are elected officials who really don’t care what the truth is. Never in the history of politics has there been a group this dedicated to public hypocrisy. They lie even when there is no reason to lie as they refuse to be criticized. It’s depressing that they could be so corrupt and dishonest as a group. Just pathetic.

  • Well, maybe Tucker would be willing to demonstrate that he believes in empiricism and has some honor, by announcing on his next show that Shooster was right.

    If you’re really vexed about this, why don’t you all write your e-mail lists, and ask them to write the silly-looking dweeb asking him to do so, and ask them to pass the message on. If the e-mails really get around a lot, maybe some blogs will follow it and write on whether he does so or not. The idea (that you should write about) is people should not be pressed from being troop supporters by Republicans, like Shooster was. Shooster showed what a congressperson who cared about the troops should know, while Blackburn was shown up as not knowing that and just using their sacrifice to manipulate people.

  • The GOP is forgetting that MSNBC has heavily invested in Puppet Theatre technology in their Olbermann laboratory. Not that Dan Abrams is likely to go for it, but I think a few interviews with GOP politicians represented by tongue-depressor puppets might convince them to end their boycott.

    Even an empty chair would work. “Senator Grassley, what’s your response?” (cut to empty chair. SFX: crickets) “So, then, if I understand you correctly, the GOP doesn’t care what the people think. Well then. Moving on..”

    Of course, that would only happen in a universe where MSNBC was an independent journalistic organization and not a supporting player in the Village Kabuki Theater. Still, it’s fun to imagine.

  • Just for the sake of the trolls who obsess over my comments, I was not missing the point by writing what I wrote in my #6 comment and not wringing my hands over how the Republicans screwed us the latest time. Sorry, but I can’t be expected to write my comments exactly as every con-person who is trying to undermine my credibility says I should write them every single time. If you don’t like it you’re going to have to grow up and stop being so gullible.

    Sometimes I want to write about one aspect of something, and not write something that would be extraneous. I am not a one-man propaganda machine for the liberals in America who has to always come up with our total message for us every day.

  • I can’t think of a better idea than for the current crop of Republicans to boycott the media. One less megaphone for their nonsense would be a good thing. Better that they grumble about the unfairness among themselves while sitting in a corner sucking their thumbs.

  • This, I think, has been in the works for quite some time now; the GOP/FOX “axis of weasel” wants a “coalition of the shrilling” where “Das Base” can go to get exclusive content.

    FOX won’t put negative spin on the GOP hardliners, and the GOP hardliners will assist FOX in “scooping” the rest of the MSM. What better way to add prestige, increased viewership—and as a result, increased advertising revenue—than to make FOX the “official network” of the Reskunklican Hill Folk? It’s the “Gott/Volk/Reich” mantra that morphed into “Gott/Reich/Fuhrer” once the NSDAP gained overt control of the media.

    And one of the symbols of the Nazi media was the image of a fox. How uncannily ironic….

  • Why stop there? Shouldn’t a Rep know the age, spouses name, years married, kid’s names and ages,… of every casualty from their district? I guess the dems have to take their victories where they can. It’s not like the minority party has given them any real power.

  • They may not be a party of grown-ups, but they are the party of discipline and know how to retaliate. Now if only the Dim-Dems had half as much discipline, and would lean on spineless network executives one-quarter as much as the Rethugs to get a little balance into the MSM.

    Not holding my breath.

  • 1. That question was a cheap attack, and doesn’t really make a point. I’m sure if you asked any Dem. Representative the same thing, they’d answer similarly.

    2. Democrats voted unanimously to condemn the moveon.org ad. Some of them were offended by it as well.

    3. Yes, that is a stupid overreaction to boycott MSNBC.

  • The more repubs can flood the airwaves with their ‘issues’, the less bandwidth is available for any real discussion.

    Assuming we’d ever get any real discussion, anyway…

  • # 21 Rich,
    Doncha know that only RWA followers will follow the twists and turns of the RWA Spew Machine. For the Dems, it has nothing to do with discipline; it has to do with having the intelligence and character to reach ones own conclusions. Will Rogers famously declared, “I’m not a member of any organized political party: I am a Democrat!”
    With thanks to Bob Altemeyers’ The Authoritarians.
    DC

  • RepubCo must not be made to look foolish or unprepared. A calm, cool and collected answer must always be at hand and it must be presented in a modulated tone and without a hint of uncertainty. Control is all, whether it’s the individual or the situation. Any situation that may cause a breakdown or even a crack in the seamless presentation of the RepubCo viewpoint is to be avoided like a Senate subpoena. The shiny crust over the B.S. is razor thin. They detest being cornered and confronted with their own hollowness.

    RepubCo knows that people will walk off a cliff if the person in front walks over first with confidence and head held high. And if the leader surreptitiously steps to the side at the last moment and watches uncaring as the followers fall to their destruction, well there’s more where they came from and if they were that stupid in the first place then they ended up where they belonged.

    That kind of confident facade doesn’t come from getting called on your B.S. by smart aleck, presumptuous, know nothing talking heads on T.V. And if one of those talking heads happens to sneak in a short, sharp and totally unexpected jab, then that needs to be addressed in a f’n hurry with some guarantee that it will never, ever happen again.

    Image uber alles.

  • MSNBC is a FAR LEFT, anti American, propaganda machine, they have zero conservatives, Matthews, olbermann, minka, and the crew are cables version of moveon.org

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